


Redamancy

by crushinator



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Addiction, Blood Drinking, F/F, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Game(s), Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:32:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3685401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushinator/pseuds/crushinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanaya and Terezi explore a world without war. Post-game. Featuring extensive travel, control issues, tree cities, at least one identity crisis, a few questionable choices, and very large caviar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redamancy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tasbine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tasbine/gifts).



> I defaulted on Ladystuck this year because of life issues. Now that the life issues are over, I was finally able to finish this story as a treat.
> 
> "Supposing that after the game is finally over they are both alive and relatively in tact, I would love to see something dealing with how they help each other adjust to the new world they find themselves in. Especially if it involves something pale between them."

After the war you go wandering. No one stops you. No one catches your shoulder and whispers to you as you walk through the door to a new universe lit with twin suns, waxing. They know that victory was largely thanks to you, though none but John seem to recall exactly why or what you did. How could they remember? How could any of them remember? How can you?

Not that it matters. You know and they know that you did your part. You’re entitled to your time. You will come back to them later, if you want. You are, after all, a paragon of predicting possibility to practice. A connector, deliberately disconnected. You will make your way. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The cosmic dust of the old universe vanishes in a pixelated mass of glitches and Caliborn goes with it. They win. After years of isolation and awareness and blood, it's over. A new universe takes its first shaky step onto a cosmic lily. A door opens to a new world.

Most of them get to work immediately. They build hives and human houses mixed with the absurd technology only interdimensional apocalypse scenarios can engender. Roxy and Sollux get together and set up a net within a few hours. Jade and Dirk and Equius fall into some sort of three-way robot oneupsmanship contest. Feferi enlists Horuss to set up indoor plumbing. John and Karkat set up a truly terrible cinema.

Some are restless. Vriska leaves. So does Terezi. Some choose hobbies. Dave creates shitty jpegs. Jane bakes. Rose knits. 

Kanaya sews. And sews. And sews.

It isn’t that she’s having trouble settling in. She isn’t. She has enough to eat and drink. She has more than enough to do when she’s feeling bored. Her relationship with Rose is better than it has ever been. It’s just that she has so many ideas. The sky is lit with two suns and she’s always drawn energy from light. It makes sense that the first thing she’d do after waking is begin another project and the last thing before sleeping is finish one. On productive days she starts and finishes as many as three dresses. When her closets overflow, she begins to give them away. Her fingers ache. And she creates.

It takes a night when Rose lays a warm palm on her shoulder and Kanaya reaches for her lipstick instead of Rose’s hand for something in Kanaya to pop like a flashbulb. After that, she congeals. The tulle and chantilly ball gown and the swallowtail jacket terminate in medias res. Her fingers forget how to fell stitch. Everything she’s created is wrong, ugly, unflattering, poorly-designed. She wields her seam-ripper like a chainsaw and it all goes to tatters.

This isn’t like her. She’s always been calm. The warm center of the cold and chaotic universe. A cauterizer. A forged iron. Her friends wrinkle and she smooths. Now, in her recoupracoon with the small city ascending around her, she sits in stagnation, surrounded by scraps.

“I believe the game may be responsible for some of this,” she admits to Rose one morning.

“I know,” says Rose. “It’s been hard for me, too.”

A few weeks pass. Rose stays with her. She helps her clean up her unfinished projects and doesn’t berate her when she fails to finish more of them. She tells Kanaya stories about Latula’s latest skateboard tricks or Feferi’s growing collection of local marine life. They discuss Meulin’s struggle to form friendships outside Kurloz and the way Karkat shouts down anyone who asks about Terezi. Rose admits to sitting in front of the alchemiter for minutes at a time, resisting the martini that she so wants to consume. The game has touched everyone in some way, she assures her. Kanaya’s fingers curl. The pillow in her lap remains unmended.

Her friends visit off and on. It’s Aradia who tells her she should leave.

“It helped me,” she says. She brushes a dark clump of hair away from her face. A bandage sticks to her neck, stained with dark red. “Sometimes you need to disconnect. Not do anything for a while.”

Kanaya stares at her. “If you are suggesting that my current problem was actually the solution all along, I must inform you that you are pretty much mistaken.”

Aradia smiles and raises her eyebrows. Her dimples are dusted with dark red. “You’re trying too hard to live. Try being dead for a while.” 

Kanaya rolls her eyes.

Aradia and Rose engage in a lengthy discussion on the metaphysics of death in life that Kanaya cannot bring herself to care about. When Aradia leaves, Kanaya lays on the couch and imagines herself as a pearl button being pressed under layers and layers of fine fabric made by skilled, active hands. More fabric is added every night. Each bolt is more finely crafted than the last. One final sheath of light, thin silk is laid on top of the pile, and the button cracks.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There’s an itch behind your eyes that comes and goes. It smells like twining gold branches and cold stars, like sticky soda and cracked plastic balls and ripped seams. You feel it most when you try to catch a few hours rest in the long day, and least after waking, when your dreams slither away and you slide out of the tree-excreted slime your subjects (creations?) sleep in and you greet the short night.

You are not sure what you were expecting when you won the game. Karkat liked to yell about godhood and the gratitude of the billions and billions of aliens you would meet upon your inevitable victory. You are sure that he was never serious about that. What Karkat wanted was to belong. He wanted the respect and admiration of his friends, not the trembling reverence of the terrified masses. You saw straight to the center of his squashy nougat core the moment he first messaged you on Trollian, angrily demanding who the wall climbing, waxlight sniffing fuck you thought you were doing sending Sollux live wasps for his mainframes in place of the bee larvae you’d promised him. 

That had been such a good joke! 

The world is weird. The creatures smell like a mix between trolls and humans. They sleep little and sing instead of speak and they have true wings instead of vestigial mutations. They pay you little mind as you traverse their multitiered cities. You enjoyed their apparent disdain for you and their red temples to justice, wreathed in dragons and strewn with blue flowers on feast days. The old you would have wished to dig her hands into their systems of law and enact just and swift punishment to the criminals who flaunted it. She would have made herself an inextricable part of their system and she would have pleasured in helping them make lawful choices.

The new you keeps her hands in her pockets. Some days, even this doesn’t stop you from scratching your eyelids raw. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Kanaya is a homebody at heart. Travel is not a habit for her. She would rather walk the rooms of her hive, cleaning and decorating and creating and hosting small parties that culminate in pleasant games of charades or euchre than haul herself bodily around an unfamiliar and possibly hostile world. 

It’s just.

It’s. 

Well.

She no longer has room. Every segment of her hive is taken up with bits of cloth and unfinished projects that she wants to finish someday. And she will finish them. Not now, but when she gets through… whatever it is she’s getting through. Which she will. So there’s no sense in throwing all her projects away. 

Even though they sit so high they block the windows. And the table. And the chair. 

She needs to get out.

So she packs. Her room is a mess. She digs a shoulder bag from one of the piles next to her recoupracoon. She decides to pack light; a portable wardrobrifier and alchemiter and a computer complete with pesterchum fit neatly in her bag. There isn’t any reason to bring any projects along. What else does she need? A map, she’ll need a map, or at least a planetary positioning pinpointer of some kind. Does this world even have satellites? She has no idea.

“You’re going, then?”

Kanaya’s chin snaps up. Rose is standing there, leaning against the doorframe, her arms crossed over her stomach. She’s wearing the purple drop waist Kanaya made her for her wriggling day. She is so beautiful Kanaya wants to cut something.

She hesitates. Then she nods. “Yes. I thought I would take up Aradia on her advice. Strangely delivered though it was.”

Rose tucks her skirts behind her knees and sits next to Kanaya on the carpet. “And without saying goodbye. How gothic of you.” 

Kanaya executes an imperial-grade eyeroll.

“Yes. That was my plan all along. I was going to vanish into the harsh day, my satchel heavy with memories, leaving you to pine alone waiting for my return.” She clasps Rose’s hands and holds them to her chest. “Do not wait for me, my love. Promise me you will not. Do not be afraid... to love again.” 

Rose smiles. She rests her forehead against Kanaya’s. “Oh, but I already have. That’s what i came to tell you. Nepeta and I consummated our fully fursuited love this morning. She and I and our five hundred cats will be very happy together. There will be cats on doilies. Cats on our wingback loveseats. Cats on our tastefully chosen Naruto bedspread. Cats everywhere, Kanaya. Everywhere.” 

Kanaya kisses her. Hours pass. They fall asleep speaking of knitting patterns and needles, of theories on flown friends and timetables of contact. Kanaya dreams of iron and anemia, of ethanol and broken glass, and a single, spiked, replete sphere forever out of reach. 

When she leaves, Rose and Roxy watch her from the window of their shared home. She waves to them, once. Roxy nods, head cocked and grinning, and puts her hand on Rose’s shoulder. Rose presses her palm against the glass. Kanaya saves it up.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You run into Rufioh and Tavros after a couple of perigees. They’re followed by a cavalcade of excitable animals. They are an endless delight. Rufioh remains the chillest and most weirdly charming shitheel your dumb world has ever produced. When he calls you “doll” you’re not even a little tempted to stab him. Tavros lets you play with a winged lizard that sticks out its tongue at irregular intervals and skitters back and forth along your outstretched arms. You name her K1LLDOZ3R. Tavros tells you that her name is already Peaseblossom. You inform him that his naming skills are subpar and that K1LLDOZ3R has already accepted her new name and won’t answer to anything else. He rolls his eyes at you, and calls the lizard by the name he gave it. It alights on his shoulder. You tell him you’re proud of him. 

In the end, you give the little dragon back, old name and all. You don’t know how to take care of something that small. Tavros and Rufioh invite you to join them, and you have to admit that a small part of you is tempted by the offer. The other part of you considers maintaining friendly relationships with cheerful and relaxed trolls like them on a day to day basis and politely throws the offer into a volcano filled with lavasharks. 

They head east. The little dragon does too. You head west. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

At first, it’s precisely what Kanaya needs. She is free to undo. She is always doing; doing for others, doing something to improve her life, doing what must be done, thinking too hard about everything she’s ever done or will do when she is otherwise unoccupied. Now, she can go where she wants, do what she wants, talk to or not talk to who she wants; anything is possible, anything.

She compares herself to no one. She takes long breaks for meals and takes her time picking out beautiful places to sleep. She watches the people of this world flit and skitter and isn’t compelled at all to dip her claws into their lives. Her fingers ache less and less. 

Still.

There’s a press in her thoughts. It’s like a wall. Like a wall built out of warm metal and covered with half-finished pictures and fuzzy photographs. It’s flush against her back, pushing her forward it stands still. Present. Cutting. Impossibly huge.

If she keeps moving, she hardly feels it at all.

So she keeps moving. Through the geometric cities. Through massive trees crusted in tech and bioluminesence. Through blood cravings and furtive blood satiation. 

She doesn’t stop.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You catch her scent in a robust market on a festival day. It’s a surprise! Of all those you thought might break free of the group and travel the world alone with only a backpack of possessions, Kanaya was at the bottom of the list. You would expect her to travel with a rollerbag, at least. And a matching clutch. One filled with hair dryers and lipstick. 

She is talking with a citizen of the tree city. Their voices are muffled under the cacophony of songs that punctuate all verbal exchanges in this ridiculous world. It’s murder on your ears, but not murder on your nose, so you pick it up when Kanaya leans forward and samples the local cuisine, as it were. 

_Hm!_ , you think. _Interesting_ , you also think. And _gross_ , you think for good measure. 

The citizen twitches its wings in staccato. After a few seconds of this, Kanaya straightens. She digs into her satchel and retrieves a bandage which she presses into the citizen’s outstretched hand. Then she murmurs something to it before bowing and conducting an impressive bootleg turn that propels her into the teeming crowd. She walks like a drone is behind her. 

You tap your claws against the handrail of the balcony on which you stand. One, two, three, four. It’s easy to guess where she’s headed. The path she’s on leads directly to the fertility temple, which will currently be decorated with thousands of live moths, trapped behind mesh screens. It will be packed with petitioners. 

You’ve been meaning to pay a visit to the temple.

One hand on the railing, you hoist yourself over the edge and land feet first on the plaza below. A citizen with a bandage on its neck chirps politely. It bows to you. You bow back. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Candles light the temple. They hang from the vaulted ceiling and they jut out in clusters from patterned spaces on the wall. They cluster thickest where the floor and wall join together. Most are deep green or black. Some of them are bright orange shifting to pale yellow. Kanaya uses a long white taper to light as many of those as she can. 

When she’s done, she’s suffused with mellifluous light. The moths that beat their wings against the confines of their cages fly toward her but halt their progress as they reach mesh boundaries. It seems that they can’t phase through matter. She sympathizes with them.

A crowd of locals glides in through the tall door. The strings inside her slacken at the sound of them singing to one another.

This is good. This is nice. She thinks that Rose would like this place. It’s light, like her. If she were here, she’d ask acolytes questions about the pantheon and make notes on them and possibly write stories that bordered uncomfortably along the realm of what Nepeta calls “RPF.” Kanaya smiles at the thought of it. She will take her here one day.

Which will, of course, necessitate her returning.

And she will return. She will.

The music wafting above her sounds like the songs her lusus used to sing. Her eyes prick. She wipes them with the back of her hand. She isn’t certain what the protocol is for offerings here, but she bows her head just the same, claps her hands, and whispers a few words to her dead lusus and the matriorb that was to be her legacy. Maybe she’ll hear them, off somewhere in oblivion. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You watch Kanaya walk out of the temple, through the massive, grated doors that stand propped open behind sandstone spheres. It takes her forty-one seconds to notice you. When she does, she stops. The citizens flowing in and out of the temple chitter as they push around her. Some take to the sky. Kanaya remains still as a witness stand. You grin.

“Terezi,” she says, in the same way someone might remark on a passing dragon.

You cock your head. “Kanaya,” you reply. You push up and kick out with your legs and land on the dust. The broken pillar you were perching on looms behind you. You are pretty sure you look extremely cool. 

“I was absolutely not expecting this.” 

“So I gathered,” you say, grave as a six foot hole in the ground. “But! Here we are. Two trolls in a city full of flying singbeasts, brought together by kismet for purposes unknown. What now?” 

There is a pause. It’s a long pause. Cities rise and fall in that pause. Cities like the ones made on the ground and in the trees by the winged denizens of your new universe. Cities that have existed for countless millennia and for three lunar perigees simultaneously. The wind ruffles your hair. 

“How are you doing?” she asks, evenly. 

You sigh. How anticlimactic! “As you can see, Miss Maryam,” you hold out your arms out as if she is interested in buying your scuttlebuggy and you have filled the tank with sand. “I’m doing fine.”

“Your eyes are bleeding.” 

You blink. You touch your face under your glasses and your hand comes away sticky. Ah. You press your fingertips together. The come apart with a sticky snap. “Objection! My eye _lids_ are bleeding.”

“That is not much better.” 

“Ha!” You say, like cane on steel. “You’re right. It isn’t. And how are _you_ doing, fussyfangs? Gotten enough to drink lately?” 

She flickers and smells faintly of mothballs. 

“I fail to see how that’s any of your concern,” she says. 

“Rude! I fail to see anything.”

You are pretty sure Kanaya rolls her eyes. Her light steadies and dims at any rate.

She steps off the path and joins you in the shade of the pillar. She shrugs one shoulder. Her sour apple tote falls on the ground. There are a few soft clinks.

“Would you like some tea?” she says, as she crouches in front of it. 

There is an excess of saliva in your mouth. You crouch on the ground next to her. “Yes. Yes, I would. Do you have the kind with extra grub casings?” 

She hands you a cup. 

You take your hot grub juice party to a low alley just outside a drool-worthy food stand that specializes in meat on a stick. Which, in your opinion, should be the only meat allowed. They spike interesting pieces of fruit between each meat chunk. It’s a rumpus in every bite. You obtain a few for yourself and a few for Kanaya, and the two of you sit at a shaded table, consuming your sustenance and sharing intelligence about the new world and the old. She doesn’t ask you why you left. You don’t ask her, either.

“It’s almost noon,” you say, as you break your emptied sticks in half and toss them over your shoulder. “Do you have a place to sleep?”

Kanaya frowns, gets up, and picks up your trash. She deposits it in a receptacle before she sits down again. “No. But it isn’t pressing that I find a place right away. I am not planning on sleeping for quite a while yet.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Oh? Going through your rebellious phase this late in life? What would your grubmom say?”

“She was diurnal.”

“Hardcore.”

She shrugs.

“Did you know,” you say, carefully tracing circles on the table in front of you, “That too much sun causes excess anxiety?”

“The suns here don’t bother me. I am fine.”

“Hm,” you say. You can feel said suns on your skin as the wind shifts tree branches to and fro above you. Shadows flash as a citizen soars by. The light tingles a little when it returns. “They bother me.” You spring to your feet and hold out your hands. “It’s late. Come with me! I’ll show you my hive. We’ll eat sugar beetles until we pass out or explode.” 

“You have a hive?”

“Yes! Technically.” You put your hands on her back and push her forward. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Terezi’s hive is not so much a hive as it is a very large hole inside an ancient, hollow branch of the tree that makes up the city. There’s a pool in the dark back corner that is full of sap. Kanaya spots a load gaper, an alchemiter, a low, bare table, and an ablution trap. The walls are bare. Terezi waves it off when Kanaya comments on them, saying she’s only been here a few weeks and she’ll be moving on soon.

Something about it disturbs her, however. Kanaya has never known Terezi to avoid putting her mark on anything. She is a meddler. A molder. A delighted paver of paths and people. She is not, nor has she ever been, detached. Kanaya doesn’t recognize this troll with blood in her eyes. She wants to prod, to discover exactly what it is that’s made Terezi wander the world without leaving so much as a crude drawing of a dragon in her wake, but she isn’t sure how to ask.

Instead, she asks her to pass the beetles. They’re good. They’re crunchy and sweet. They remind her of home. While they snack, Terezi recounts some of her more exciting encounters, like the time she accidentally married a trio of strangers to one another, and the time she was mistaken for a cosplayer and decided to fabricate 1) who she was cosplaying and 2) how she’d managed to tape down her wings so convincingly. All the while, she absently picks at her skin. She hisses a little whenever her claws go too deep. 

“You’re going to scar,” Kanaya says, when Terezi pricks her eyebrow and a bead of teal surfaces, pearlescent and enticing. 

“Scars are badass.”

Kanaya frowns at her. “Why do you do it?”

Terezi flicks a scab at the wall. “Why do you drink blood?”

Kanaya stiffens. “I don’t.”

“You do. You sampled someone today, in the market. You even gave your victim a bandage when you finished! Very solicitous.”

”I…” She clenches her jaw as heat rises in her face. Terezi cocks her head. Kanaya looks sidelong at the floor. “Yes, okay. Yes. I do consume blood from time to time. I am not sure how it failed to escape your notice, but I am a rainbow drinker. I drink rainbows. It’s a compulsion. It isn’t the same as your habit.” 

“Isn’t it?” Terezi says. Kanaya looks back at her. She’s grinning. “You can still eat, so it clearly isn’t something you _need_ to do. I don’t have a reason to bleed everywhere, but here I am, doing it right now. It’s pretty gross! Want some?”

Kanaya bites her lip. She turns away again. “No.”

“Why not? I’m not doing anything with it.” 

“Stop.” 

“Suit yourself,” Terezi says, shrugging. She taps her claws on the table. Kanaya smooths her skirt. A half-eaten beetle glints at them in the low light. “I’m going to bed,” she says, finally. “Are you staying? You can share the recouprapool.”

“Recouprapool?”

“It’s a new word. I made it up.” Terezi gestures at the pool of sap and Kanaya understands. “As you can see, It’s big enough for the both of us. It’s also heated.”

Kanaya blushes. “I. Um. Hm.”

“It’s up to you.” She shucks off her shirt and drops it on the floor. Her shoes and socks follow. “There’s a communal cell of pools like this at the roots. You can stay there if you want. But,” she says, standing, clad in understated rainbow lycra, “You have to promise to visit in the evening. I have at least twenty eggs. We are going to eat all of them.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You slide into the sap and sleep. Kanaya is still dithering as you do it. You’re glad. You missed her dithering, a little. She has always thought she is much more cool and controlled than she actually is. Flustering trolls like her is one of your pleasures in life. 

Sometime in the day, Kanaya slips into the pool beside you. You wake when the sap ripples over your chin. 

“Shh,” you say. You touch her on the shoulder. She goes very, very still. “Shh.”

She catches your wrist. You let her raise it to her lips. She waits for you to nod. You regard her, your eyes closed, your lips parted, as she delicately pierces your flesh with her fangs. There’s a hot spike of pain that passes like a heartbeat. She is careful, Kanaya; careful not to bruise, careful to avoid bone, careful to take your blood slowly, slowly, so you don’t become lightheaded. When she finishes, she licks you, once, to encourage the bite to heal. You let your arm fall back into the sap. 

“Go to sleep,” you whisper.

She wipes her hand across her mouth. It takes her a few moments to get situated. She eventually leans her head against the edge of the pool across from you. You fall asleep before she does, so you don’t know how long she sits there, up to her neck in warm, slimy sap, staring at anything but you.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They do, in fact, eat twenty eggs in the evening. The eggs are semi-translucent things that Terezi says were spawned by a behemothic fish creature that swims the local rivers. They’re savory and slightly chewy. Kanaya is actually sorry there aren’t more left when she’s done. Terezi promises that they’ll go egg hunting at dawn. 

Kanaya accepts this invitation, along with another one to use the ablution trap. They’re both fairly crusty; the sap of this world doesn’t dry and peel off as easily as sopor slime once did. That may be the thing Kanaya misses most about Alternia; no one outside it understands the value of slime. Not even Rose. 

When Kanaya takes her turn in the trap, she spends an overlong time immersed there. The hot water eases the numbness of her fingers; she is always cold these days. 

She leans her forehead against the wall. Her horns tap tile and send a shiver down her scalp. What is she doing? She recalls Terezi in the dim, her cool hand on her shoulder, her invitation to take her wrist and drink. The pit of her stomach writhes and flutters. Stupid, stupid, stupid. How could she have done that? She meets Terezi by chance, the ex-kismesis of her ex-moirail, and what does she do? She crawls into a recoupracoon with her and she-

And she-

Her face flushes, and it’s not from the water. She covers her mouth. The pressure in the back of her thoughts increases.

 _Stop,_ she thinks. _Stop. You have done nothing wrong. She invited you. She_ invited _you. She was very direct_.

 _But, ah,_ says the voice in her head that sounds like Rose. _Isn’t it awful that she did?_

She turns off the tap. This is stupid. She isn’t going to dwell on this. She will dry off, she will put on her clothes, she will fight her hair into submission, she will pick out an incredible shade of lipstick, and then she will talk to Terezi about what happened. She will promise not to do it again. Nothing will stop her. Everything will be fine.

When she steps out of the trap and back into the hive, she is shocked into silence. 

The hive is bare. The low table where they ate, the nutrition block, the plate of leftover beetles, and even the heater for the recouprapool are gone. Kanaya stares. Terezi captchas the ablution trap. 

“I’d like to show you around,” she says, as she swings a full backpack on to her shoulders. 

“Oh,” says Kanaya. “Where are we going?”

Terezi grins. The open doorway frames her in inviting darkness. “Where _aren’t_ we going?” 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You start with your favorite food stalls. Crickets fried in millet, frogs a la safflower, suet, sap, and mealworm balls. It’s bird food, you say. This makes Kanaya smile. 

You lead her to a large university. It’s covered in carvings of creatures crouched over unrolled scrolls. You make thirty jokes about bird school before Kanaya begs you to stop, lest her eyes become permanently stuck staring upwards. You make mock sympathy noises, and Kanaya lets you drag her hand to a scene featuring a well-armed creature riding a giant lizard into the twin suns. That one is your particular favorite. 

You sit in on a lecture. Lectures in this world are strange; they’re conducted in song, with rhyming and non-rhyming couplets. The lecturer tends to flit around the room to take rest on various perches while the students take notes or sing questions of their own while making punctuative gestures with their hands. It’s a ridiculous system of communication. You adore it. 

No one pays any attention to you as you ensconce yourself in the back of the room. It’s a lecture on history; this one in particular is about recent changes in the court system of their city-state. You find the content fascinating. 

Kanaya, apparently, does not. As the lecturer sings about the abolishment of the death penalty, she folds her hand across her lap. She unfolds her hands and smooths her shirt. She straightens the seam of her skirt. She tucks her hair behind her ears. She straightens her skirt again. 

“What?” you whisper.

She cups her elbow with one hand and presses her knuckles against her chin. “Hasn’t it been bothering you?” she says through her teeth. 

“You will have to be more specific.”

“Them. They show no reaction to us. They don’t even seem surprised to see us. We are obviously alien. Our horns, our eyes, our manner of speaking, our lack of wings, even our coloration is so far out of the ordinary that if they are here, we are located somewhere near the suns. I was certain someone would notice us here, of all places. Surely we’re worthy of at least some scientific interest.” 

You kick out your feet and lean back on your deep-seated chair. Your shins rest just against its rim. 

“Let us consider the evidence,” you say. You keep your voice low. It glides under the music like a tentacle. “First: we can interact with them. We can buy food from them. You can procure blood. We can exchange greetings. We are, therefore, physically present.”

Kanaya concedes with a small, “Hm.”

“Second: we can converse with them. We are able to understand each other. Though as an aside, whether we actually speak the same language is a matter of debate.”

“Yes,” she says, and there’s an edge of interest to her voice. “Rose and I have long suspected that the game was responsible for smoothing out communication barriers.”

“Perceptive. Third: they utilize color in their art and architecture. They gesture a great deal with their secondary appendages when they sing. They can, therefore, see.

“So! It follows that we are not concepts. We are not ghosts. We are solid and vital. They hear us. They can see us. They are not unaware of our existence. We are, therefore, noticeable. We exist, and they know it. There can only be one conclusion: they must _choose_ not to notice us.”

You feel Kanaya shift in her seat. “Why?”

You stab the air with one stiff finger. You are the prosecution laying down the final piece of decisive evidence, and Kanaya is His Honorable Tyranny. “Because they are excessively polite.” 

Kanaya covers her mouth. She bows her head. She squeezes her eyes shut. But, in the end, she is unable to stop the emergence of an undignified, snorting laugh. 

You are very pleased. 

The sky is already lightening by the time you finish your academic invasion. Perfect. You lead Kanaya to the wide, cold river full of snakes and water lizards and monster fish that bisects the tree city that is your current home. It isn’t difficult to locate the nests in which the local fish lay their delicious eggs. They secret them in the shallows along the rocky banks, where they’re shaded by broad-leaved trees and protected by high cliffs. It’s only at dawn that the fish leave them unguarded. 

You roll your slacks up to your knees and instruct Kanaya to follow you, and to keep quiet. You both walk into the water. The rocks are textured; easy for the two of you to grip with your feet, even as the river reaches your knees. You locate a cache of eggs by smell before Kanaya spots it and you plunge your claws into the water. You hook a fat one from a hugely populated clutch, perfect for eating. When you bite into it, the firm chorion gives easily under your fangs. Viscous, savory yolk pushes through your perforations and squirts all over your chin. Globs of it splash in the water below. You laugh and hold the half deflated egg out to Kanaya. She takes your wrist, and she eats it from your hand. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They continue in this way for a time. Terezi leads them through the places she’s already been, sharing her discoveries about this world and its crepuscular inhabitants. They don’t stay in one place for more than two or three nights at a time. Kanaya is restless too easily and Terezi isn’t averse to sticking to the nomadic life. She says it invigorates her. She repeats as much to Rose during one of Kanaya’s regular facetime sessions. 

“We are just a couple of independent women who don’t need no matesprits,” (“Terezi!” says Kanaya, as Rose laughs). “Observing the local culture, eating all the local food, gawking at the local architecture, going where the wind takes us. Sometimes literally. There are cling wafters everywhere. Everywhere, Miss Lavender Lalonde.”

“I wouldn’t mind watching that, were it made into a television series,” says Rose.

“It would be the most entertaining,” says Terezi. “We’ve fought pirates.” 

“Have you?”

“No we haven’t,” says Kanaya, trying to cut in before things get too out of hand. “We heard about recurring acts of piracy on a nearby river and discussed what would happen if we were to be attacked by them.”

“We RPd it,” Terezi adds. “Kanaya makes a very compelling Commodore.” 

“Oh, I have no doubt about that. She does cut quite a dashing figure in tailcoats,” Rose says, as Kanaya buries her face in her hands.

Rose doesn’t ask when Kanaya is coming home. It isn’t a topic that Kanaya ever raises, and, she suspects, one that Rose will not bring up. 

“I look forward to seeing you again,” she says instead, at the end of their chat. 

“You too,” Kanaya replies, as she always does. 

“I don’t see anything,” Terezi adds, and cackles at her own joke. 

One evening, as Terezi steps out of the ablution trap to make way for her, Kanaya sees a spot of dried sap on her shoulder. She peels it off without thinking. A small hiss of air issues from between Terezi’s teeth. 

“Did I hurt you?” asks Kanaya, thinking of bandages and raw skin.

“No,” she says. “You did not.”

She grabs for Kanaya’s wrist and moves her hand over the location of the wayward sap. Kanaya takes her meaning and seeks out any other spots that Terezi may have missed. There is another on her upper arm, another on her ventral thorax, and another on the ridge of her nose. When she’s done, she takes Terezi by the shoulder and gently pushes her toward the nutrition block of their temporary hive. 

“My turn,” she says, meaning the ablution trap. 

“Only if you shower first,” says Terezi, meaning something else entirely.

Kanaya makes feels color rise in her face. “I. Yes. I would like that very much. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go do that. Shower, I mean. Thank you. Goodbye.” 

The pulse in her neck jumps at high tempo all through her shower. It slows to allegretto when she dries off and sits down in front of Terezi and Terezi begins to inspect her for wayward sap patches by feel. Warm, glittery tingles spread across her with each touch, each tug. Her brittle, quick thoughts melt and swirl together to form a fixed orbit around every place that she is touched. Terezi is a gravitational singularity and she is the spiral arm of a galaxy, awash in couruscating dark. 

“Is this okay?” Terezi asks, after a while.

“Yes,” says Kanaya. 

Her eyes close. She stays still as Terezi slips her fingers into her hair and lets her claws trail along her scalp. Her lips part.

“Why did you leave?” she asks Terezi.

Terezi takes a few measured seconds before answering. “I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. And I thought I could do it better alone.”

“Without Vriska?”

Terezi’s hands still. They rest against Kanaya’s temples, then slowly, slowly, she moves them again. “Yes,” she finally says. “Among other things.” 

“What other things?”

Another silence. Terezi moves her claws down the back of Kanaya’s neck. Kanaya breathes in and out, once, twice. 

“I’ll tell you a secret. Are you ready?” She waits. Kanaya nods. “Everyone shapes you. Everyone! Your friends. Your quadrant-mates. Any being that gets to know you. They think they know what you are and they all want you to behave a certain way, or react a certain way. If you don’t, the pressure of their expectation can cause you to break out in spiderweb cracks. Until one day you wake up and all the solid parts of you are crumbling. 

“So what do you do? Do you stay and break yourself until you are what they think you are? Or do you repair yourself in a fire of your own making?”

Kanaya catches Terezi’s hands and pulls them around her neck. Terezi leans into her back. 

“No,” says Kanaya. “I am sure that isn’t right. No one expects you to be anything but yourself. You do not need to be fixed. And any one of us would have helped if you’d said you felt that way.” 

“Perhaps. But leaving was my choice. Like you!” 

Claws press into Kanaya’s sternum. Terezi lifts her head and props her sharp chin on Kanaya’s shoulder. Their horns clack softly against one another. 

“So why did _you_ leave?” she says into Kanaya’s ear.

“I don’t know. It was the only thing I could imagine doing.” 

She presses her palm against Terezi’s cool cheek.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

You remember the little lizard you considered taking from Tavros. You used to keep it within the borders of your senses so you could track it as it snapped after insects and birds and other small lizards. It used to tremble slightly when it spotted quarry. Just like Kanaya, when she notices a cut or a fresh wound on anyone who happens to pass you by. Unlike the lizard, however, she always checks herself. Even when you absently begin picking at your old scabs. Instead of asking to partake, she only pulls your hand away from your face and puts chalk in it. Her hands shake. 

“Draw something for me,” she says. “Please.” 

You oblige her often, and end up leaving garish murals on the surfaces in your wake like punched holes in a stenterrographer’s office. It’s nice to draw again, though you didn’t realize you’d missed it. Kanaya joins you sometimes. Her lines are flowing and elegant as yours are jagged and lively. She draws you in a candy red suit one day, detailed with teal, and promises to make it for you when you go home. 

Every day she goes without blood leaves her dimmer. She eats regularly (you make sure of this) and sleeps regularly (ditto), but she slows just the same. You consider holding her down and forcing her to drink from you. Not seriously, of course. If you did that, she would run away from you and never come back. Possibly massacre a small village to slake her terrible thirst. It is your civil responsibility to prevent that from happening. 

You begin to think. You do this very, very hard.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They are scaling a giant, ancient tree, crusted with homes and businesses and all manner of things that compose thriving cities, when a very young creature pushes by them three quarters of the way skyward. There is a fresh cut on its shoulder. Kanaya lunges for it without thought. 

Terezi catches her by the wrist and pulls hard, digging her heels into corrugated bark as, just for a few seconds, Kanaya strains against her like a barkbeast after a long-eared lapine. She wants blood, she needs blood, she must have it, she must, no, no she doesn’t, she doesn’t want it, she can get by without it, she must have it, she has to have it, she doesn’t want to want it, she doesn’t, she _doesn’t_. She sinks into a squat and presses her forehead to her knees, panting. Terezi keeps hold of her. They couch in a recess off the path, half shadowed. 

“Thank you,” Kanaya says. Her voice is a cinch belt around her throat. 

Terezi nods. Her grip is steady on Kanaya’s wrist. Kanaya can feel the pulse in her thumb. “Do you want mine?” 

“I-,” she swallows. She does want it. She wants it so much. And she knows that Terezi would give it to her, like she did back at her temporary hive. She would do it without question, without begrudging her, like her friends did back at the settlement, or on the meteor, or in her disintegrating, cluttered hive. She could do it. She could do it over and over and over again. All she has to do is accept. “No.”

“All right,” she says. 

She stays there as Kanaya vacillates between panting and holding her breath. It’s hard. It’s so hard. She wishes she could drink her own blood sometimes, so she wouldn’t have to take her awful thirst out on others. Stomach pain comes in colickly waves. 

“Tell me something distracting,” she says. 

There is a pause for a few moments. 

“I almost killed Vriska.” 

Kanaya looks up at her. Her face is passive, like the bas reliefs she showed Kanaya with her hands. 

_But you love her_ , Kanaya wants to say. “Our Vriska?” she says instead, and regrets it. 

Terezi lets it pass. “Yep.” 

“When?”

“On the meteor. Before John showed up. She was going to fight Jack. She thought she’d fly off and be the big hero and take him out in a dramatic final boss fight. Ridiculous. As if Jack would bother with her when there were so many more of us to eradicate. She would have led him right to us. He was going to follow her godtier sparkle trail back to the meteor and kill us all.” 

She stops and scratches at her eye. Kanaya stays quiet. 

“She never thinks through consequences, our Vriska. But I do. And I was ready to kill her. I was going to stab her in the back, right through her mesothorax.” 

She makes a loose fist, as if she’s holding her cane-sword, and she stabs it laterally in front of her. 

“But you didn’t. Kill her, that is.” 

She drops her hand. “No. John stopped me. He stopped us both. Isn’t that interesting?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean,” she says, teeth flashing as she draws out the word. “That there was a third choice. A secret third path that I was supposed to take when presented with two shitty endings. One: kill. Two: die. ‘Incapacitate’ was behind hidden hivehatch number three. Lucky for me that hivehatch number three showed up dressed in buttermint cream pajamas.”

Terezi lets out a breath, long and slow. She rocks back on the balls of her feet until she tips her own balance and leans against the trunk of the tree. Kanaya almost doesn’t notice when she lets go of her wrist. 

“Vriska,” she says. Kanaya has to lean in close to hear her. “Future Terezi killed her. I know she did. John won’t confirm it but I know she did. I wish-” she breaks off, shakes her head. Reaches under her glasses and rubs at her eyes. Teal blooms at one corner. Kanaya bites her lip.

“So you see,” Terezi continues, forcibly strong and enunciative, “It’s interesting. You believe yourself to have only two choices. One: ingest blood and be miserable. Sate your cravings and guilt yourself into overload from drinking your friends. Two: don’t ingest blood and be miserable. End up lunging at anything nearby that bleeds and hating yourself for not having better control over your biological urges.”

Teal blood made tyrian by red shades gathers into a tiny bead at the corner of Terezi’s eye. 

“Now tell me, fussyfangs. What’s behind hivehatch number three?”

Kanaya touches Terezi’s face, wipes away the trace of fresh blood there, and brings her hand to her mouth. She licks it and her pain slows, slows.

“Accept it,” she says, “And let my friends help me.” 

Terezi bites her finger. She offers it to Kanaya. 

“Correct.” 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It isn’t simple. If there is anything you have learned in your navigations through labyrinthine branches of probability and destruction deferred it’s that the business of living is messy and rigged with pitfalls. She refuses you as often as she accepts you. This is fine! It is her choice, as you have so helpfully pointed out many, many times. You will help her when she needs it and won’t when she doesn’t. She is the one who decides. 

She is also the one who decides to go home. 

“Things are no longer so…” she waves her hands, as if looking for something in the dark. You smell a spot of blue still on her lips. You wipe it away with your thumb. 

“Difficult?” you suggest.

She fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “Not exactly. But yes.”

You lean back against the statue you’re currently perched on and consider. It’s twilight; a good time for new beginnings. A flock of this world’s denizens glide by, delirious with the new energy of featherbeasts after their daily nap through the brightest part of the day.

“That’s as good a choice as any,” you say. “Besides. It’s been way too long since I’ve had the chance to haze Karkat about his questionable taste in films.” 

“Vriska might be there.”

Her tone is determinedly casual, as if she is asking whether you have a subscription to Justice Weekly and your hatchday is in the next few nights. You are touched by her solicitation for you.

“She might.”

Your pulse doesn’t thrum at all when she says, “What will you do if she is?”

You shake your head and fold your hands over the handle of your cane. “An interesting question. Stop her, possibly.” 

“From what?”

“From whatever it is she’s doing. She’s bound to be doing something. She’s Vriska.” 

“Well. True,” she says, “But you are not her moirail.” 

“No,” you say. “I’m her sister.” 

She is quiet. That’s fine with you. There is more than enough to think about while she digests what you’ve said. You were not entirely truthful, of course. Stopping Vriska was never all there was to you and her. You loved her. You still love her, in spite of everything. You think if you come across her again, you’ll tell her that. For all the good it will do.

One day, you will tell Kanaya. Not today. But soon. When the two of you talk less of blood and addiction and regret and trying too hard to fit where you think you should and more of creating a place where fitting is as easy as pinning cloth around someone’s arm and marking where to cut, you will tell her, and she will understand you, and everything will be fine. You can see it, clear as water. Clear as ice. Clear as the paths that branched out before you when it was time to go into the world and find out what it could offer and it offered you her.

“I was flushed for her,” Kanaya blurts.

“I know,” you say.

“I want you to understand,” she says. “It is very important to me that you understand that I do not feel flushed for you. Do you understand that?” 

“I do.”

“Okay. Good. Yes.”

She holds your hand. You stand on your toes and you kiss her on one flushed, flat cheek. It isn’t an outright declaration of intentions, but you know Kanaya understands by the way she squeezes your hand in hers. It is what it is. It’s a start.

“I would like to go home now,” she says. 

So you do.


End file.
